Website Design Cost

How Much Does Website Design Cost?

Low cost options, including using site generators or templates, can be free or less than $100. Web design software such as Dreamweaver and Microsoft FrontPage come with basic templates you can start with. Additional templates can be found on the web -- we found professionally usable free designs at freelayouts.com, Andreas Viklund.com[1] , and Interspire[2] , though you'd still need web design software and some technical skill to use these layouts.

Many Web Hosts offer easy-to-use website generators as part of a bundled package. Examples include Google Apps[3] , which include other tools such as mail and calendars, Microsoft Offce 365[4] , which includes e-mail and an online folder, Homestead.com[5] , known for its ease-of-use, and Yahoo Small Business[6] , which can easily add storefront functionality.

Hiring an independent designer or Internet firm to customize an existing template can cost as little as $200. In these cases, a live person may help you customize a free or low-cost template to contain the content you've already written or created. You may do best to contact a local web designer using Craigslist[7] , searching for web design.

Hiring a local website designer for a small job can cost $500-$1,500. Often you can find an independent web designer who advertises locally who can build a small site for $500-$1,500. This would include several custom made graphics, navigation images and logos for a small site with 3-10 pages. It'll save a lot of time and money if you have a general sense of the layout of the site and a good sense of the content on each page. You may do best to contact a local web designer using Craigslist[8] , searching for web design, or to ask others for referrals. At this price, be sure to look at their portfolio of sites they've created.

Hiring a small, professional web design firm for a small site can cost $2,000-$5,000. This could include custom made graphics, navigation images and logos for a small site with 3-10 pages. It may be more complicated and require some simple JavaScript functionality, some basic database or e-mail functionality, or basic merchant or shopping cart functionality for Internet-based retail. It'll save a lot of time and money if you have a general sense of the layout of the site and a good sense of the content on each page. You may do best to contact a local web designer using Craigslist[9] , searching for web design, or to ask others for referrals. At this price, be sure to look at their portfolio of sites they've created.

Tip: web designers are sometimes paid commissions to refer clients to particular web hosts. Be sure to research the web host they recommend to make sure it's competitive and one you'd want to use.

The site design process will go more smoothly the better an idea you have in advance. Look at other sites similar to the one you plan to have, and determine what kind of information you want to put on each page, and what kind of look and feel you want on your site.

Anytime you hire a designer, they should give you all the source files you need to set up your site, including .html files, Flash files, web-ready images, easy-to-edit original versions of the images, and also possibly the original designs layouts, such as Photoshop .psd files.

Anytime you a hire a designer, they should help you deploy your website on a web host.

Some designers may also give you some hints on how to optimize your website for search engines.

High quality designers will make sure any JavaScript functionality will work correctly on a wide variety of web browsers and will compress whitespace out of the .html to make files download as efficiently as possible, and will provide compressed and uncompressed versions.

Additional costs:

The more ambiguous your requirements or the more changes you make to your website, the more time it will take and the more it will cost to hire a web designer. It will help if you have a basic idea of what you want your site to look like and what kinds of graphics you'd like. It can help to point to existing samples. It will also help if you've already written the text you want on your website.

More complex functionality, such as additional artwork and logos, simple database functionality or more complicated shopping functionality can cost more.

Complex websites can cost much more, especially if they require advanced functionality or sophisticated or original artwork.

Shopping for website design:

Microsoft FrontPage usually retails for around $150-$200 and Macromedia Dreamweaver usually retails $350-$400. They are widely available at computer retailers such as Amazon[10] . Although we've seen lower prices advertised on the Internet, lower price vendors may be selling academic licenses to the software, or may have a poor record at the Better Business Bureau[11] .

A good place to start looking for a local designer is Craigslist[12] , searching for Web designers under services.

Web hosts offering site design tools include Google Apps[13] , which include other tools such as mail and calendars, Microsott Office 365[14] , which includes e-mail and an online folder, Homestead.com[15] , known for its ease-of-use, and Yahoo Small Business[16] , which can easily add storefront functionality.

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